Gennady Golovkin, pictured in February 2017, defends his world title belts at the T-Mobile Arena three weeks after Floyd Mayweather faces Conor McGregor at the same Las Vegas venue © GETTY/AFP/File / Josh Lefkowitz
LONDON, United Kingdom, Jun 20 – Gennady Golovkin has dismissed the idea that Floyd Mayweather Jr’s comeback against Conor McGregor will overshadow his Sep 16 clash with Saul ‘Canelo’ Alvarez.
WBC-IBF-WBA middleweight champion Golovkin defends his world title belts at the T-Mobile Arena three weeks after Mayweather faces Conor McGregor at the same Las Vegas venue.
Five-weight world champion Mayweather, now 40, will not have fought for nearly two years by the time he faces 27-year-old Irishman McGregor, a mixed martial arts fighter, on Aug 26.
But McGregor, a two-weight UFC champion, has never fought as a professional boxer and faces the sport’s best practitioner for decades.
Golovkin (37-0, 33 KOs), 35, insists his fight with Alvarez (49-1-1, 34 KOs) is bigger and of more significance than Mayweather-McGregor, which he sees as a “circus show”.
“This (Mayweather-McGregor) is not for fighters, but business,” Golovkin told reporters at a press conference in London Monday.
“I think people understand what is a true fight, a boxing fight, like mine with Caneno or a big show, maybe sometimes for people a funny show, like a circus show.
“Everybody knows — Conor is not boxer, just show. If you want to watch a show please watch them, if you want to watch a true fight, a true boxing fight and you respect boxing, watch my fight with Canelo.
“This is business. Conor with Floyd is not a boxing fight because Conor is not a boxer. Money fight OK, show fight OK.”
Regardless of some dismissing it as a mismatch, Mayweather-McGregor is expected to do record business for a boxing fight and may eclipse Golovkin-Alvarez in revenue and television viewers.
But Golovkin-Alvarez is a fight for the ages, one of the most eagerly awaited boxing match-ups in recent memory.
It pits two crowd-pleasing icons against each other to decide the world’s best middleweight.
Golovkin, a knockout machine from Kazakhstan but now based in California, has made 18 consecutive world middleweight title defences and was taken to points for the first time since 2008 by American Daniel Jacobs in March.
Alvarez, 26, also has an impressive record that has seen him win world titles in two weight divisions with one blemish — by majority points decision to Mayweather in 2013.
Only one world title — the WBO — will not be on the line when the pair collide, but the winner on Monday was offered the chance to fight for it later this year.
Alvarez, who cruised to a wide points win over fellow Mexican Julio Cesar Chavez Jr in May, admitted he did not know who WBO world middleweight champion Billy Joe Saunders (24-0, 12 KOs) was when the Briton addressed him at a press conference in London on Monday.
Saunders, who asked Canelo why he had not fought Golovkin sooner, holds the only world middleweight title not in Glolovkin’s hands and wants to face the winner of the Sep 16 showdown.
“I didn’t even recognise him,” Alvarez told reporters Monday.
“He needs to come down in weight if he want to fight one of us. I’ve never really watched him or studied him.
“With one hand tied behind my back and with my eyes closed I will still beat him.”
Saunders was linked to fighting Golovkin in his homeland of Kazakhstan on June 10, but the fight never happened.
“He talks too much, but he’s not a promoter,” Triple G told reporters at a press conference in London Monday.
“I told my promoter Tom Leoffler I wanted this [Saunders] fight for June 10 and he said he wasn’t ready. He has said no two times and he has wasted my time. I said I’m ready for this fight in Kazakhstan but he said no and I turned my focus to Canelo.”
